Osprey accuracy

[evert]

I have some Ospreys in my collection, they are nice to handle, nice to look at, and the front heavy barrels combined with the pisol grip angle makes them good for offhand shooting... but..

The orignal piston rings, combined with the unguided spring make them quite horrible to fire, and most other guns i have of similar vintage are more accurate(HW35, BSA Meteor, Webley Victor)

One of my opsreys has gottem a bit of mechanical attention, with a tracker piston and a diana/gami type seal, A Maccari HW50 spring and delrin guides- a much improved gun, but slower than the Trackers with the same setup. Im currently planning to take the Ospreys and the Trackers apart this christmas, the Osprey transfer ports looks larger than the trackers, but measuring is needed.
Im also planning to convert an ospery to take the HW30 seal, hoping this will improve things further.

Wasnt the Osprey intended to be some sort of target gun back in the days? Were they better when the piston rings were fresh?

[thevoid]

I'll be interested to see how you go, my Dad has an unmolested Osprey supertarget with the standard beech stock, I've not been let loose with the internals (yet) I love the side lever cocking and though the loading tap has its own problems I find dropping a pellet into the breech really easy with cold fingers.
Finally is the trigger, I've heard the Omega or maybe the Vulcan 2 stage blade will fit.

[Hsing-ee]

The standard Osprey was sold as a sporting rifle, I think they hoped it would make about 10 fpe, but the internals limited it to about 7.5 fpe in .177 and a maximum of about 9 fpe in .22. Alot of BSA Airsporters were making only 9 fpe in .22 at the time so it was average for those days. I don't know why they were not fitted with a spring guide. The later Tracker and Viscount sidelevers I think have similar internal dimensions but had plastic piston seals and this probably brought the power up to what you might expect, about 10 and 11 fpe.

The Osprey Super Target had a weaker main spring to improve the recoil characteristics for 6 yards and 10 meter paper punching. This model was fitted with a diopter and a bulky wooden target stock, rather than the graceful, shotgun-like stock of the standard Osprey.

If there are accuracy issues, make sure the tap is aligned exactly in the middle of the bore axis. BTDT wrote an excellent article on how he improved the accuracy of a Tracker from awful (3" at 30 yards) to very respectable (less than 1/2") simply by diagnosing an out-of-alignment tap and taking some time to shim it so that it was spot on.

The Osprey has a lovely stock shape and the heavy bull barrel also gives it a unique feel and handling characteristics. An interesting little rifle which was probably not developed enough before it went into production.

The piston rings took a while to run in as I remember, and were there to give good consistency (relative to the standard leather seals that often caused problems on Webley Mk III target guns). I think they rob the rifle of alot of power as well though. The Osprey is a whole generation older than the Webley Victor.

[T 20]

If there are accuracy issues, make sure the tap is aligned exactly in the middle of the bore axis. BTDT wrote an excellent article on how he improved the accuracy of a Tracker from awful (3" at 30 yards) to very respectable (less than 1/2") simply by diagnosing an out-of-alignment tap and taking some time to shim it so that it was spot on.

Hi Alistair

I thought the Osprey had a tapered loading tap ?

so Jim's cure for alignment wouldn't work on it.

Or was it during production of the Osprey when Webley changed from tapered to parallel loading tap ?



All the best Mick

[Hsing-ee]

Hi Alistair

I thought the Osprey had a tapered loading tap ?

so Jim's cure for alignment wouldn't work on it.

Or was it during production of the Osprey when Webley changed from tapered to parallel loading tap ?



All the best Mick

OOOh err maybe you are right. I think it was a Tracker or a Viscount that Jim fettled. I can't remember the tap on the Osprey, I THOUGHT it was a simple drum which would fit with the cost cutting 1970s, but it might be a taper.

[evert]

OOOh err maybe you are right. I think it was a Tracker or a Viscount that Jim fettled. I can't remember the tap on the Osprey, I THOUGHT it was a simple drum which would fit with the cost cutting 1970s, but it might be a taper.

My Ospreys have the parallell tap, shared with the Trackers.

I read elswhere that Ospreys have tapered taps, this leads me to think there are two generations of the model?

Also, thanks for the info on the internals, and the tap-shimming.

If I find differences between the Tracker and Osprey transfer ports, I will post them here.

[T 20]

OOOh err maybe you are right. I think it was a Tracker or a Viscount that Jim fettled. I can't remember the tap on the Osprey, I THOUGHT it was a simple drum which would fit with the cost cutting 1970s, but it might be a taper.

I've sussed it Alistair

Early Osprey taps were tapered and Osprey MK2 taps were parallel as shown by tap part numbers here :-


https://www.gunspares.co.uk/products/24548/Tracker/


I think it was a Tracker that Jim played with that Edbear made a new shim for.




All the best Mick

[ggggr]

I have some Ospreys in my collection, they are nice to handle, nice to look at, and the front heavy barrels combined with the pisol grip angle makes them good for offhand shooting... but..

The orignal piston rings, combined with the unguided spring make them quite horrible to fire, and most other guns i have of similar vintage are more accurate(HW35, BSA Meteor, Webley Victor)

One of my opsreys has gottem a bit of mechanical attention, with a tracker piston and a diana/gami type seal, A Maccari HW50 spring and delrin guides- a much improved gun, but slower than the Trackers with the same setup. Im currently planning to take the Ospreys and the Trackers apart this christmas, the Osprey transfer ports looks larger than the trackers, but measuring is needed.
Im also planning to convert an ospery to take the HW30 seal, hoping this will improve things further.

Wasnt the Osprey intended to be some sort of target gun back in the days? Were they better when the piston rings were fresh?

A few things here. As quite a few of you know, I like some guns with softer mainsprings and the Dian 25 is one I use in a few guns. A Webley Falcon fitted with one plinks lovely. I have found that Bsa Meteor springs fit Webley Hawks and Ospreys better than the Webley mainsprings, which always seem tight. I have tried fitting O rings to a few Hawks and Ospreys but have found a couple of problems (1) you have to really make sure that there are no sharp edges on the cylinder (2) even then, the O ring is tight. (3) I have never had any luck fitting 2 O rings like Bowkett used to do? (A .177 Osprey would not push a pellet out after about 30 shots. (4) After that I started to fit an O ring in the front groove and the old Ptfe ring in the back groove, in the hope that it would hold a tiny bit of lube.
Using the set up in 4^, I have found Hawks and Ospreys nice to shoot.

Our Mod Mick T20 has sleeved transfer ports down and gotten Hawks up to the legal limit, although one was fitted with the Hw seal (sure he will put links up)----So I see now real reason, why if you sleeved an Osprey port, you could not get more power as they are more or less a sidelever Hawk, like the Mercury is a break barrel Airsporter.
I think Torrens on here fitted a Leather seal to an Osprey and got a very nice shooting gun.
I do like the Osprey, once you get rid of the safety and fit the Victor sear spring.

[torrens]

Hi Guy,
yes I've now fitted leather washers to both my Ospreys but it involves cutting the piston head back, so a one-way mod. They shoot well at 9ft lb with springs I can easily fit without a compressor. I would say the original plastic rings give a very smooth quiet action, but they wear out after a while and I got fed up with yearly replacement ( I used one a lot....) I also shortened both barrels to 14" and accuracy seems good for target / plinking up to 30yds but neither the modified carbine or the original version will equal a TX200 at 50yds. Having said that I sold the TX because I prefer the slimness and easy loading of the Webleys.

I did try a HW30 piston washer in one Evert, it worked well but the action soon got harsh because the seal was damaged by small scratches or machining marks at the end of the cylinder. These might have been unique to my Osprey but it's worth doing some careful polishing if possible.

Cheers
torrens